Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  Patricia stepped out to the hall and pulled the door closed not quite hard enough to be called a slam. It was clear now what had happened; Bradford had thrown her out, had insisted on talking to Harrison alone. Patricia wouldn’t take that kind of defeat kindly.

  She moved away from the door and saw Evelyn, and her mouth twisted. “Well, you little snoop, get an earful?”

  “And a bellyful, Aunt Patricia,” Evelyn said. She frequently thought of things like that, infrequently said them. Tension helped bring them to the surface. But even now, tense and angry, she couldn’t put the broken glass into her voice that Patricia quite naturally had in her’s. Evelyn’s statement had been soft-voiced, calm, it slid past Patricia’s sharp face without a mark.

  Or did it? Patricia stopped long enough to look Evelyn up and down, and say, “Belly? I didn’t know you had a belly.”

  Why was it that the more obscure an insult the more sharply it was felt? Possibly because apparent non sequiturs are impossible to answer. Evelyn understood that Patricia had been making a slighting reference to Evelyn’s sex life—her capacity for a sex life, perhaps—and the remark stung much more than if it had been a direct explicit statement. Also, where was her defense? What was her sex life, that it should be immune to sneers? One bored Frenchman in nearly three years.

  Evelyn stood in helpless silence while Patricia stalked away, and it wasn’t till she was out of sight that Evelyn said, softly, “I didn’t know you had ears.” Another near non sequitur, but also relevant, if one cared to look for the meaning. Somehow, though, Evelyn doubted that Patricia, had she heard it, would have felt crushed.

  v

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, THURSDAY, Evelyn went riding alone. To get away from Earl in particular, who was being more morbidly persistent than ever this trip and who was afraid of horses, and to get away from the family in general. There was nothing new or different about this visit, they were all following their normal behavior patterns, but for some reason it was all much more intense this time than it had ever been before. Possibly because of Bradford, whose manner continued to alternate between two poles of aloofness; a remote sardonic amusement and a closed grim silence.

  Whatever the reason, everyone was being more himself, more herself, the tensions were tighter, the flare-ups were faster and harsher, and Evelyn found her nerves steadily fraying more and more.

  Not only because of Earl, who was prowling after her this time with a kind of morose urgency, fitfully lit by self-scorning humor. There was also Martha, whose panicky desire to please, to do something, to somehow pay her dues so she could feel like a full-fledged member, was driving her harder than ever before. This was the first time she’d ever invaded the kitchen, which she’d done today after lunch, rattling both herself and the staff with her compulsion to be useful in some sort of domestic way. (It was also the first time Evelyn had discovered that Martha was as harsh and domineering toward servants as her family was toward her, a discovery that made sense but which had surprised and shocked Evelyn nevertheless.) It had taken Evelyn most of an hour to calm the cook’s ruffled feathers, and even now there was no assurance that Martha would not once again enter the kitchen nor that the cook would not finally leave it.

  The two Patricias were at one another almost exclusively now, with only occasional negligent sideswipes at their respective husbands, neither of whom had the inclination to pay much attention. The declared object of the women’s battle was poor little Bradford Chatham. The elder Patricia had attacked the boy for some failing or some misdemeanor, and the younger Patricia leaped to her son’s defense with a determination that fooled no one about her true feelings toward the boy, including young Bradford himself. Fortunately the battle didn’t require his presence, and except for mealtimes he could be found in the upstairs library, devouring the fiction there. Almost any world, it seemed, was better than his own.

  The other children, the five Simcoe girls, normally squalls, were now a fullfledged hurricane. The tensions and panics of the adults had communicated themselves to the children, who reacted with their own tensions and panics, so that at least one of the girls was wailing at all times. They’d started to turn their attentions on young Bradford at one point, invading the upstairs library for the purpose, but Evelyn had astonished everybody—including herself—by lashing out at them like a lioness protecting her cub, and the girls had retired, surprised but wary, and had left the boy alone since.

  Evelyn’s own child, Dinah, was being kept segregated in her own quarters, with the nurse. Evelyn had spent some time there yesterday evening, after the run-in with Patricia, and had also dropped in twice today, and Dinah seemed just as glad for the isolation. In the past, the Simcoe girls had never looked upon her as anything but a smaller antagonist, which had baffled Dinah’s gentle and reserved nature, and now she expressed no desire to renew the acquaintance.

  Evelyn herself found Dinah’s quiet corner of the house a refuge of sanity in trying times, and never more so than right now. The complexities of strengths given and received that made up her relationship with Bradford were echoed, perhaps even more complexly, in her relationship with her daughter. While it was true that Bradford was the center of Evelyn’s life, Evelyn was in turn the center of Dinah’s, and it was as important to her to be needed by her child as to need her grandfather.

  The solitary nature of their life here in Eustace held Evelyn and Dinah together even more than in the usual mother-daughter relationship, but Evelyn kept the arrangement from becoming cloying by always remembering to maintain the age difference between them. She neither asked Dinah to mimic a grown-up companion nor did she herself counterfeit childhood. When she did—at Dinah’s request—enter into the child’s games, it was never with artificially heightened enthusiasm. The result was, they were comfortable with one another, and Evelyn had come to count on an hour or so with Dinah as a sure antidote to confusion or depression or a bad case of nerves. Or a houseful of Harrison’s branch of the family. Whenever possible now, Evelyn took herself away to Dinah’s play room, where she could be safe from the adults just as Dinah was safe from the children, or more particularly from the Simcoe girls.

  Simcoe père, Maurice, was more invisible than ever, barely coming out of his room for meals. There was a particular chair in the front parlor where he usually spent his visits here, but not this time. A maid Evelyn had questioned told her that Maurice Simcoe was sitting in an equivalent chair in his room, not doing anything, not watching television or reading or talking to anyone, but merely sitting there, gazing mildly at the far wall, his cigar held loosely between the first and second fingers of his left hand.

  The same maid had earlier come to Evelyn with an apologetic and embarrassed complaint; Herbert Jarvis’s seductive techniques, never particularly subtle, had escalated to something approaching rape. The girl was sorry, but she wouldn’t want to have to be around Mr. Jarvis any more.

  Well, Herbert was having problems, too. Bradford wasn’t speaking to him. He had closed himself with Harrison after dinner yesterday, and he’d closed himself with Harrison after lunch again today—Patricia was still being excluded—and it had become obvious that whatever consultation Bradford would engage in concerning the mess Harrison and Herbert found themselves in would be limited exclusively to Harrison. Herbert was not a blood relation, only an in-law, and not highly thought of at that. Bradford was not going to take him into consideration at all.

  Which was a harshness unusual in Bradford, but not unheard of. During the second Presidential campaign, one of the Party leaders had made what Bradford considered a grievous tactical error—though no one before or since blamed that one error for the loss of the election—and for the rest of the campaign that man ceased for Bradford to exist. He was frequently in the same room with Bradford during planning sessions—ten or twelve or fifteen men discussing a specific problem, frequently in a hotel room—and Bradford neither spoke to the man nor heard anything he might say. By the middle of October, the man had stopped co
ming around.

  The tactic had seemed harsh but just in the context of a Presidential campaign. Under the present circumstances, it seemed unnecessarily severe. But then again, everything was being unnecessarily severe these few days.

  But nothing, including Bradford’s treatment of him, justified Herbert’s treatment of the maid. Evelyn was determined that he should stop it, but she knew it would do no good to talk to him directly. Herbert had the lecher’s belief that women were objects without brains, to whom it was never necessary to listen. So she would go to Harrison, when his current session with Bradford was done, and warn him that if he didn’t get Herbert to stop she would have to report the matter to Bradford. That should solve it.

  If only the whole situation were as easily solved. But at least it could be escaped, temporarily. Evelyn took Jester, one of her particular favorites from the stable, and went riding in the woods, relishing the freedom, the air, the illusion of motion.

  Just as there were no surprises from the people now staying at the house, there were no surprises for Evelyn wherever she might ride on the estate. The woods, the orchards, the meadows were all known and already well-traveled by her in previous outings. There was always a faint air of confinement when she took rides like this, and that too was intensified in the present situation. She felt vaguely imprisoned, limited somehow to a defined circle in which she endlessly moved, so that Jester’s hoofs didn’t really make prints in the soft ground but rather fit neatly into old prints already there. The largest prison exercise yard in the world, she thought grimly, but then the overstatement of the thought broke her mood and she smiled at herself. Prison? Where were the locks, then? Where were the bars?

  She came at last to the vanished old town in the middle of the woods, and paused to look around again at the last traces of stone walls, hints of a life now gone. This time it didn’t seem to her sad, this place, but rather restful. Their problems are over, she thought, and then laughed at herself for that thought, too. I seem to be full of self-pity today, she thought, and ironically, I wonder why? Then Robert Pratt entered her mind, he being the last person she’d been to this spot with, and she thought, why didn’t he ever call me?

  Which was the most stupid thought of all. Why should he have called? They had only met once, and of course he had his own life to live. Still, she had half-expected for a week or so that he would phone, and now two months later it was still possible to be sharply disappointed that he had not.

  Sunlight. She despised self-pity, and knew it could usually be combated by applications of direct sunlight, so she heeled Jester into a trot again, leading him out of the soft dim moist woods and the mulch-buried town, out onto a long rolling green meadow in dazzling sunlight, wild flowers in careless commas scattered over the green, flies humming in the hot clear air.

  “Life could be goddam beautiful!” she cried aloud, angry and miserable because it was not, and heel-thudded Jester into a long open gallop around the great circle once more.

  vi

  HARRISON WAS WAITING AT the stables, and caught her grimace on seeing him. Behind his sunglasses his expression was apologetic, but determined. He came over to where she was dismounting and said, “Evelyn, I have to talk to you.”

  The groom took Jester’s reins and led him away. Evelyn said, “Uncle Harrison, you want me to say something to Bradford for you. But it won’t do any good.”

  “You’re the only one who can talk to him,” Harrison said. She had never seen him this frightened before, and the realization of the depth of his urgency startled her. He went on, “I can’t talk to him. I don’t know what’s happened, he just won’t listen to me. But he’ll listen to you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Will you try? Will you let me tell you what’s going on, and then will you try? No, don’t even promise that yet. Just let me tell you my side of it. Then, if you want, you talk to Brad. All right?”

  Evelyn hesitated. She didn’t want to get involved in this, she thought by now it was due to get worse before it got better, but it was hard to resist so naked and defenseless an appeal. “I’ll make a bargain with you,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about something else. About Herbert. If you’ll talk to Herbert, I’ll do what I can with Bradford.”

  “Herbert?” For just a second it seemed as though the name really didn’t mean anything to Harrison, that he’d put his partner and brother-in-law out of his mind just as completely as Bradford had done. But then, with a kind of panicky irritation, his face distorted in an expression the camel might have worn as the last straw was put on, and he said, “What now? Herbert? What’s the matter now?”

  “He attacked one of the girls.” She would normally have phrased it less melodramatically, but she could see it wasn’t going to be easy to hold Harrison’s attention. Now, while she had it, she said, “He must stop it, Harrison. This was worse than any of the other times. If I have to ask Bradford to put him out, I will, but I don’t want to have to go that far.”

  “Good God!” Even through the sunglasses Harrison’s eyes could be seen popping. “He didn’t really attack her, did he?”

  “I’d rather not go into the details,” she said. “But as the girl described it to me, there really isn’t any other word for it.”

  “A little pat—I know Herbert sometimes—”

  “Not a little pat. A lot of clutching. A lot of quite serious clutching and disarrangement of clothing.”

  “I—Well.” Harrison’s hands moved vaguely, he looked to left and right at the stables, the road, the woods. “I don’t know why he’d do it,” he said, in a kind of trailing hopeless voice. “Had he been drinking?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry to have to bother you with this, I realize you’re overburdened as it is, but I simply cannot have Herbert driving the servants away when we have thirteen guests in the house.”

  “Thirteen?” Harrison seemed startled, and then amused in a fatalistic manner, by the number. “Well, that’s appropriate, isn’t it? Yes, I’ll talk to him. He won’t bother any of the girls any more, I promise you.”

  Having intimidated Harrison into quelling Herbert for her, Evelyn at once felt guilty, and tried to make up for it by saying, “Now it’s your turn.”

  “Yes.” But his train of thought was broken now, he had too many problems to concentrate on all at once, and he just stood there in the sunlight with a helpless look on his face.

  Evelyn said, “Shall we start for the house? We could take the path around by the pond, that way’s shadier.” And more roundabout, to give him plenty of time to say what he had to say.

  “Yes, fine,” he said, and they started off, he in casual flannels and a colorful shirt, she in her riding clothes.

  They were well in under the trees before Harrison spoke, and then he began with a question: “Has Brad said anything to you about all this?”

  “Not really,” she said. “He doesn’t talk to me about serious problems very much.”

  “He didn’t say he was ready to dump me, eh?”

  She gave him a surprised look, but he was simply moving along at their slow pace, his worried eyes on the shaded path ahead of them. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would he have you come here? I mean, besides the fact that he’d never even think of such a thing.”

  “Then I just don’t know,” Harrison said, and stopped, and looked hard at her. He was still wearing his sunglasses even here under the trees, but Evelyn could nevertheless see the intensity of his gaze. “Is he serious?” he demanded. “He can’t be, he has to know it’s no good. All I could think of was, it’s the brush-off.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Uncle Harrison.”

  “Of course not,” he said, and offered her a shaky apologetic smile and a brief touch on the arm. “I’m sorry, Evelyn, my mind’s just running around in circles. I can’t think why Brad would want to give me such a bad time. He hasn’t said anything to you at all?”

  “Not a thing,” she said. “But
if he’s being less—understanding than usual, it might be because of Paris.”

  At his questioning look, she went on to tell him about the outcome of Bradford’s series of meetings with the Chinese official, and how the news about Harrison had fit into his homecoming. He listened with his mouth twisted in irritation, and at the finish he burst out, “You mean I’m getting my head beat in because of some lousy China-man?”

  “I suppose that’s part of it,” she said, not reminding him that the rest of it was his own insistence on riding with George Washington, California, all the way to Armageddon.

  “If that doesn’t beat everything,” he said, pacing back and forth on the narrow path amid the trees while Evelyn stood and watched him. “Some Chinaman plays him for a sucker and I get to be the whipping boy!”

  “What is he doing, Uncle Harrison?”

  “I’ll tell you what he’s doing,” Harrison said. He was really angry now, though Evelyn suspected the anger was at least half relief at finally understanding the cause of his brother’s treatment of him. “He’s throwing me to the wolves, that’s what he’s doing.”

  “He wouldn’t. You know him better than that.”

  “I don’t believe I know him at all,” Harrison said. “Not that man, not the one up there now. I’ve never seen that one before in my life.”

  “Well, what is he doing? Is he refusing to help you?”

  “Oh, no.” Harrison was luxuriating in the permission to be angry, and was even indulging now in sarcasm. “He’ll help me, all right. He’ll help me all the way to the chopping block. You know what his idea is?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “The Harrison Lockridge Memorial,” he said, rolling the syllables out with exaggerated contempt. “Could you believe that? The Harrison Lockridge Memorial. And do you know what the Harrison Lockridge Memorial is supposed to be?”